Newsletters: Newsbites

SANS NewsBites is a semiweekly high-level executive summary of the most important news articles that have been published on computer security during the last week. Each news item is very briefly summarized and includes a reference on the web for detailed information, if possible.

Spend five minutes per week to keep up with the high-level perspective of all the latest security news. New issues are delivered free every Tuesday and Friday.

FIRST LOOK: AUSTRALIANS RELEASE STANDARDS FOR CLOUD SECURITY

STORM CENTER TECH CORNER

STORM CENTER TECH CORNER************* Sponsored By McAfee, a Division of Intel Security ********** In case you missed it: Analyst Webcast: Advanced Network Protection with McAfee Next Generation Firewall. SANS had the opportunity to review McAfee NGFW in a test environment, exploring a number of capabilities: clustering and redundancy, numerous varieties of VPN access, policy options and features such as end-user identification and advanced anti-evasion tools. http://www.sans.org/info/173352 ***************************************************************************

- --Cyber Threat Intelligence Summit | Washington, DC | Feb 2-9, 2015 | Brian Krebs, renowned Data Breach and Cybersecurity journalist who first reported on the malware that later become known as Stuxnet and also broke the story on the Target and will keynote the CTI Summit. Adversaries leverage more knowledge about your organization than you have, learn how to flip those odds at the CTI Summit combined with 4 intensive DFIR courses. http://www.sans.org/event/cyber-threat-intelligence-summit-2015

- --10th Annual ICS Security Summit | Orlando, FL | Feb 23 - March 2, 2015 | At the ICS summit you will learn what is the nature of ICS-focused threats & implications of targeted attacks, what is not working and what are the paths (options) to build your program around. In addition Kim Zetter, Author, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon, to keynote. Come prepared to learn about the recent onset of ICS-focused attacks and how you need to hone your skills to defend our critical infrastructure systems. Plus 6 top-rated ICS courses. http://www.sans.org/event/ics-security-summit-2015

Following a recent breach of its networks, the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Company (KHNP) has planned drills to test its response and resilience to attacks. Unknown intruders posted plant equipment designs and manuals to the Internet earlier this month. The post was accompanied by a vague threat of physical damage if the company did not close three reactors by Christmas. -http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30572575

Investigations have revealed how attackers likely gained purchase in the JPMorgan Chase system earlier this year: one of the company's network servers had not been upgraded to require two-factor authentication. -http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/entry-point-of-jpmorgan-data-breach-is-identified/[Editor's Note (Pescatore): Like the German steel plant and many others - - weak authentication as root cause for breach. (Murray): Every year the Verizon Data Breach Incident Report points out that Orphan Servers are a cause of data leakage. If trusted, they also compromise the network. Reduce the level of mutual trust in your network. ]

At his end-of-year press conference, President Obama indicated that he would like to see the reintroduction of an intelligence-sharing bill in this legislative session. In the wake of the Sony Pictures breach, Obama said that he has a team working on seeing what can be done to prevent such attacks in the future, and that he would like to see Congress focus on "stronger cyber security laws that allow for information sharing across private sector platforms as well as the public sector." -http://www.zdnet.com/article/white-house-wants-congress-to-revisit-controversial-cispa-style-cybersecurity-laws-after-sony-attack/[Editor's Note (Pescatore): These information sharing bills are largely ceremonial, sort of like legislation naming the magpie as the official bird of cybersecurity. ]

FIRST LOOK: AUSTRALIANS RELEASE STANDARDS FOR CLOUD SECURITY

In general, the Australian Cyber Security Center has put together a "Critical Security Controls"-like look at the most important security processes to examine when considering a cloud service provider. There are several recommendations that are meaningful/doable and rightly prioritized (like "choose a CSP that has been assessed, yearly test incident response, protection authentication credentials, tokenize data, etc.). There is a sensible differentiation between what security issues are most relevant to Software as a Service vs. Infrastructure as a Service, etc. The CSP version is pretty much just the Tenant document with the syntax changed such that an auditor looks to see that the Tenant recommendations were followed.

On the negative side, several are just high level mandates that are either way too generic (Implement security governance) or easy to say/hard to do (encrypt data at rest, obtain and promptly analyze detailed logs/real time alerts). These are all good things to do but in the real world the business/mission is requiring cloud services now and well thought out phases strategies are required that do the high value/easy to implement security controls first and over time incrementally address the "long poles in the tent."

Overall, these documents are much more useful for actual implementations than NIST SP 800-144 or 500-291 that are huge thought pieces, totally unusable by anybody trying to actually make a cloud service as secure as possible for business use. I think the Australian one is definitely in the spirit of the Critical Controls in picking the most important, keeping it short, etc., and there is a direct mapping from the Critical Controls to the major elements of the Australian list. Those who have adopted the Critical Controls will find the Australian documents useful for assessing cloud services. -http://www.asd.gov.au/infosec/cloudsecurity.htm

John Pescatore was Vice President at Gartner Inc. for fourteen years. He became a director of the SANS Institute in 2013. He has worked in computer and network security since 1978 including time at the NSA and the U.S. Secret Service.

Shawn Henry recently retired as FBI Executive Assistant Director responsible for all criminal and cyber programs and investigations worldwide, as well as international operations and the FBI's critical incident response. He is now president of CrowdStrike Services.

Stephen Northcutt teaches advanced courses in cyber security management; he founded the GIAC certification and was the founding President of STI, the premier skills-based cyber security graduate school, www.sans.edu.

Dr. Johannes Ullrich is Chief Technology Officer of the Internet Storm Center and Dean of the Faculty of the graduate school at the SANS Technology Institute.

Ed Skoudis is co-founder of CounterHack, the nation's top producer of cyber ranges, simulations, and competitive challenges, now used from high schools to the Air Force. He is also author and lead instructor of the SANS Hacker Exploits and Incident Handling course, and Penetration Testing course.

Michael Assante was Vice President and Chief Security Officer at NERC, led a key control systems group at Idaho National Labs, and was American Electric Power's CSO. He now leads the global cyber skills development program at SANS for power, oil & gas and other critical infrastructure industries.

Mark Weatherford is a Principal at The Chertoff Group and the former Deputy Under Secretary of Cybersecurity at the US Department of Homeland Security.

William Hugh Murray is an executive consultant and trainer in Information Assurance and Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Sean McBride is Director of Analysis and co-founder of Critical Intelligence, and, while at Idaho National Laboratory, he initiated the situational awareness effort that became the ICS-CERT.

Rob Lee is the SANS Institute's top forensics instructor and director of the digital forensics and incident response research and education program at SANS (computer-forensics.sans.org).

Tom Liston is a Senior Security Consultant and Malware Analyst for InGuardians, a handler for the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center, and co-author of the book Counter Hack Reloaded.

Dr. Eric Cole is an instructor, author and fellow with The SANS Institute. He has written five books, including Insider Threat and he is a founder with Secure Anchor Consulting.

Mason Brown is one of a very small number of people in the information security field who have held a top management position in a Fortune 50 company (Alcoa). He leads SANS' efforts to raise the bar in cybersecurity education around the world.

David Hoelzer is the director of research & principal examiner for Enclave Forensics and a senior fellow with the SANS Technology Institute.

Gal Shpantzer is a trusted advisor to CSOs of large corporations, technology startups, Ivy League universities and non-profits specializing in critical infrastructure protection. Gal created the Security Outliers project in 2009, focusing on the role of culture in risk management outcomes and contributes to the Infosec Burnout project.

Alan Paller is director of research at the SANS Institute.

Brian Honan is an independent security consultant based in Dublin, Ireland.

David Turley is SANS operations manager and serves as production manager and final editor on SANS NewsBites.